"At 4 AM we realized the servers were simply wiped." Yaroslav Ivanyuk revealed details about the attack on the online library "Kamunikat"

In an interview with Radio Svaboda, project leader Yaroslav Ivanyuk called what happened to the publishing house's servers on the night of May 7 a "destructive hacker attack."

According to Yaroslav Ivanyuk, more than 70,000 different Belarusian publications — books, newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, video and audio materials about Belarus — were stored on the servers.

"It's hard to define exactly when it started. We noticed it at half past one in the morning. But it was already too late. At first, we hoped it wasn't an attack, but just an overloaded traffic situation, but eventually, around 4 AM, we realized that our servers were simply wiped out.

Of course, in such situations, not everything is lost, as copies are kept, but it all takes time to sort out. Although the situation could be worse, as one of the providers said, a virus might have been launched that would prevent recovery. But we are working on it."

Yaroslav Ivanyuk does not rule out that the hacker attack on the servers storing Kamunikat.org publishing house materials was carried out by malicious actors on behalf of the Minsk regime. The IP addresses of these attackers, according to Ivanyuk, are registered in Asian countries.

"The situation shows that Kamunikat.org is indeed a very important project for preserving Belarusian culture, literature, language, and identity, and that is why it is disliked by Lukashenka's regime and its special services," believes Yaroslav Ivanyuk.

Yaroslav Ivanyuk mentioned that the first attack on the publishing house occurred in 2023 when the main domain of the Kamunikat.org publishing house was blocked in Belarus.

"Then, last year, our website was recognized as a place where 'extremist materials' are stored, later we were even recognized as an 'extremist formation', and the Minsk prosecutor's office decided that the content of Dorota Michaliuk's book about the BNR, which we published, 'poses a threat to the interests of the Republic of Belarus'. Therefore, what happened tonight is a continuation. The first such attack was last year, on the night of December 25, but then we noticed it faster and managed to stop the destructive activity. This time it didn't work. But, as someone already wrote on Facebook, 'Kamunikat', like the Phoenix bird, will be reborn."

Yaroslav Ivanyuk is not ready to predict how long it will take to recover the losses incurred by the publishing house's servers.

The Belarusian internet library Kamunikat.org, which was founded and is being updated in Bialystok, celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Its visitors are mainly Belarusians. In addition to the online library "Kamunikat", Yaroslav Ivanyuk later created a publishing house of the same name.

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